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Commentary
Editors share philosophy, school memories
By Dale Bryant
After a three-month stint as interim editor of the Saratoga News, I'm finally headed to 1095 The Alameda in San Jose, headquarters of Silicon Valley Community Newspapers. With Dick Sparrer in the editor's chair, I leave knowing that the paper is in good hands.
When I became editor of the Los Gatos Weekly-Times in 1993 and a couple of years later of the Saratoga News as well, Dick was the sports editor. He and I both graduated from Los Gatos High School, although he did his elementary school years in Los Gatos and I did mine in Saratoga. We were a couple of years apart in high school (he's too much of a gentleman to reveal who was there first), so we had a common bond from the start. But we also shared a passion for community journalism. At the time, he was editing community papers in Contra Costa County; editing our sports pages was what he did for fun on weekends.
We would go for weeks at a time and never talk, but I would leave messages in his mailbox in the Los Gatos office where I worked, and once in a while, we'd communicate by email. If I happened to be in the office on a Saturday, I'd often run into Dick when he dropped by to pick up his mail and pull sports scores off our fax machine.
Over the years, I came to respect his professionalism, his easy-going style and his sense of humor. On occasion, we talked about community journalism, and we were clearly on the same wavelength.
So when he first told me he would love to be the editor of the Weekly-Times and the Saratoga News, it was very good news for me. We had things to iron out, of course, the most obvious of which was if Dick was editing the papers, who would do our sports pages? For our high-energy new editor, the answer was easy: He's been doing our sports pages while holding down a full-time job, so he would simply continue doing sports on weekends, just for fun.
Having Dick on the job frees me up to be a full-time executive editor of all the SVCN newspapers. For most of last year, I worked out of the Saratoga office while waiting ... and waiting ... and waiting for our new corporate headquarters to be completed. One would think after all the planning and construction stories I've edited over the years, I would know that major renovation projects always take more time than the optimistic first estimate.
And by the time the office was ready, I found myself back editing both the Saratoga and the Los Gatos papers, juggling several additional jobs and trying to make the papers look as if everything was just fine. I hoped that readers would not notice--or at least would overlook--a few of the gaffs, such as the letters that ran one week and then again a couple of weeks later. For those glitches, I apologize. I know Dick will be much more vigilant.
With me bouncing back and forth between offices and balancing various hats precariously on my head, I've barely been able to keep up with all the exciting changes going on in our company, so I figure many readers may not realize that last April Silicon Valley Community Newspapers, which had been part of Metro, began operating as an independent company publishing community newspapers. This separation from Metro, allowed us to focus all our energy on the community newspapers. Then as 2001 was wrapping up, we announced that David Cohen, CEO/publisher of SVCN, had become the principal owner.
In January, we moved into our corporate headquarters at 1095 The Alameda. Most of our advertising representatives are at the headquarters office at least part of the time, and the editorial staffs of four of our papers are there. Our administrative staff is there, along with the classified department.
The Weekly-Times continues to do business out of our office at 245 Almendra Ave., and a couple of weeks ago, the staff of the Saratoga News moved into the Los Gatos office, which will put extra miles on our reporters' cars, but is making the nuts and bolts of putting the papers together much smoother.
I'll continue to be involved in the Los Gatos and Saratoga communities, but from more of a distance than in the past. I'm excited about being able to devote my full attention to being an executive editor.
With SVCN's commitment to be "fiercely local," we're looking at new tools to better help us cover each community. We want to peel back layers to look for stories we've been missing. We're committed not only to local news, but to looking for stories in new places and with new eyes.
Several years ago, I served on a panel of women journalists for a program put on by the Los Gatos-Saratoga Branch of the American Association of University Women. I was asked, "What's your hobby .... What do you do for fun?" Without a second thought, I said that my job was the most fun I'd ever had. It was true then, and I believe it will continue to be the case as I take on a different set of responsibilities. One could hardly ask for more than to have work that's also fun.
Dale Bryant is executive editor of Silicon Valley Community Newspapers.
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Saratoga, California Since 1955
